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OPTIMAL SPORTS
MATH, STATISTICS,
AND FANTASY
OPTIMAL SPORTS
MATH, STATISTICS,
AND FANTASY

ROBERT KISSELL
AND
JIM POSERINA
Academic Press is an imprint of Elsevier
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Copyright r 2017 Robert Kissell and James Poserina. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

Dr. Robert Kissell is the President and founder of Kissell Research Group.
He has over 20 years of experience specializing in economics, finance, math
& statistics, algorithmic trading, risk management, and sports modeling.
Dr. Kissell is author of the leading industry books, “The Science of
Algorithmic Trading & Portfolio Management,” (Elsevier, 2013), “Multi-
Asset Risk Modeling” (Elsevier, 2014), and “Optimal Trading Strategies,”
(AMACOM, 2003). He has published numerous research papers on trad-
ing, electronic algorithms, risk management, and best execution. His
paper, “Dynamic Pre-Trade Models: Beyond the Black Box,” (2011) won
Institutional Investor’s prestigious paper of the year award.
Dr. Kissell is an adjunct faculty member of the Gabelli School of
Business at Fordham University and is an associate editor of the Journal of
Trading and the Journal of Index Investing. He has previously been an instruc-
tor at Cornell University in their graduate Financial Engineering program.
Dr. Kissell has worked with numerous Investment Banks throughout
his career, including UBS Securities where he was Executive Director of
Execution Strategies and Portfolio Analysis, and at JPMorgan where he
was Executive Director and Head of Quantitative Trading Strategies. He
was previously at Citigroup/Smith Barney where he was Vice President of
Quantitative Research, and at Instinet where he was Director of Trading
Research. He began his career as an Economic Consultant at R.J. Rudden
Associates specializing in energy, pricing, risk, and optimization.
During his college years, Dr. Kissell was a member of the Stony
Brook Soccer Team and was Co-Captain in his Junior and Senior years.
It was during this time as a student athlete where he began applying math
and statistics to sports modeling problems. Many of the techniques dis-
cussed in “Optimal Sports Math, Statistics, and Fantasy” were developed
during his time at Stony Brook, and advanced thereafter. Thus, making
this book the byproduct of decades of successful research.
Dr. Kissell has a PhD in Economics from Fordham University, an MS
in Applied Mathematics from Hofstra University, an MS in Business
Management from Stony Brook University, and a BS in Applied
Mathematics & Statistics from Stony Brook University.
Dr. Kissell can be contacted at info@KissellResearch.com.
R. Kissell

ix
x Biographical Information

Jim Poserina is a web application developer for the School of Arts and
Sciences at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He has been a
web and database developer for over 15 years, having previously worked
and consulted for companies including AT&T, Samsung Electronics,
Barnes & Noble, IRA Financial Group, and First Investors. He is also a
partner in Doctrino Systems, where in addition to his web and database
development he is a systems administrator.
Mr. Poserina has been a member of the Society for American Baseball
Research since 2000 and has been published in the Baseball Research
Journal. He covered Major League Baseball, NFL and NCAA football,
and NCAA basketball for the STATS LLC reporter network. In addition
to the more traditional baseball play-by-play information, the live baseball
reports included more granular data such as broken bats, catcher blocks,
first baseman scoops, and over a dozen distinct codes for balls and strikes.
Mr. Poserina took second place at the 2016 HIQORA High IQ
World Championships in San Diego, California, finishing ahead of over
2,000 participants from more than 60 countries. He is a member of
American Mensa, where he has served as a judge at the annual Mind
Games competition that awards the coveted Mensa Select seal to the best
new tabletop games.
Mr. Poserina has a B.A. in history and political science from Rutgers
University. While studying there he called Scarlet Knight football, basket-
ball, and baseball games for campus radio station WRLC.
J. Poserina
CHAPTER 1

How They Play the Game

There’s an old saying: “It’s not whether you win or lose; it’s how you
play the game.” It comes to us from the 1908 poem “Alumnus Football”
by the legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice, in which Coach
Experience exhorts a young running back to keep on giving it his all
against the defensive line of Failure, Competition, Envy, and Greed:
Keep coming back, and though the world may romp across your spine,
Let every game’s end find you still upon the battling line;
For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name,
He writes not that you won or lost but how you played the Game.
If we take “the Game” literally rather than as a metaphor, it’s pretty
easy to tell whether you have won or lost; there’s usually a large electronic
board standing by with that information at the ready. But quantifying
“how you played the Game” is quite another matter, and it’s something
that has been evolving for centuries.
Among the earliest organized sports was cricket. Scorekeepers have
been keeping track of cricket matches as far back as 1697, when two such
reporters would sit together and make a notch in a stick for every run
that scored. Soon the newspapers took an interest in the matches, and the
recordkeeping gradually began to evolve. The earliest contest from which
a scorecard survives where runs are attributed to individual batsmen took
place between Kent and All England at London’s Artillery Ground on
June 18, 1744. In the early 19th century the accounts would include the
names of bowlers when a batsman was dismissed. Fred Lillywhite, an
English sports outfitter who published many early books on cricket,
traveled with a portable press with which he both wrote newspaper
dispatches and printed scorecards whenever he needed them. He accom-
panied the English cricket team, captained by George Parr, when it made
its first barnstorming tour of the United States and Canada in 1859,
served as scorer, and later published an account of the trip. Cricket had
been played in North America since at least 1709; Benjamin Franklin
brought home a copy of the 1744 rule book from his second trip to
England, and over the first half of the 19th century teams were organized

Optimal Sports Math, Statistics, and Fantasy. Copyright © 2017 Robert Kissell and James Poserina.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-805163-4.00001-3 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1
2 Optimal Sports Math, Statistics, and Fantasy

in cities and colleges from Virginia to Ontario. The matches that George
Parr’s XI, as the English squad was known, played against local teams
were modestly successful in raising interest for cricket in America, but
those gains soon faded with the outbreak of the US Civil War. Soldiers
on both sides tended to prefer cricket’s young cousin, which was already
establishing itself from the cities to the coal towns of the nation. By the
time the English team returned for a second visit in 1868, cricket’s popu-
larity in America had declined. However, the connection between sports
and statistics that had begun with cricket back in England was about to
take on a completely new dimension.
Of all the organized American sports, it’s perhaps not terribly surpris-
ing that the one game to make numbers a fundamental part of its soul
would be baseball. Every event that occurs in a baseball game does so
with few unknown quantities: there are always nine fielders in the same
general area, one batter, no more than three base runners, no more than
two outs. There is no continuous flurry of activity as in basketball, soccer,
or hockey; the events do not rely heavily upon player formations as in
football; there are no turnovers and no clock—every play is a discrete
event. After Alexander Cartwright and his Knickerbocker Base Ball Club
set down the first written rules for this new game on September 23,
1845, it took less than a month for the first box score to grace the pages
of a newspaper. The New York Morning News of October 22, 1845,
printed the lineups of the “New York Club” and the “Brooklyn Club”
for a three-inning game won by Cartwright’s team 24
4, along with the
number of runs scored and hands out (batted balls caught by a fielder on
the fly or “on the bound,” the first bounce) made by each batter. Thus
was born a symbiotic relationship: newspapers print baseball results to
attract readers from the nascent sport’s growing fan base, giving free pub-
licity to the teams at the same time.
While he was not the first to describe a sporting match with data, “in
the long romance of baseball and numbers,” as Major League Baseball’s
official historian John Thorn put it, “no figure was more important than
that of Henry Chadwick.”1 Chadwick had immigrated to the United
States from England as a boy in the 1830s. Once across the pond, he
continued to indulge his interest in cricket, at first playing the game and
later writing about it for various newspapers in and around Brooklyn.

1
Thorn, J., Palmer, P., & Wayman, J.M. (1994). The history of major league baseball
statistics. In Total Baseball (4th ed.) (p. 642). New York, NY: Viking.
 How They Play the Game 3

He eventually found himself working for the New York Clipper, a weekly
newspaper published on Saturdays by Frank Queen. “The Oldest
American Sporting and Theatrical Journal,” as the Clipper billed itself,
was “devoted to sports and pastimes—the drama—physical and mental
recreations, etc.” It did cover a wide variety of sports and games, from
baseball (“Ball Play”), cricket, and boxing (“Sparring” or “The Ring”),
to checkers, billiards, and pigeon shooting. It would also cover the newest
play opening at the local theater, and the front page would often feature
poetry and the latest installment of a fictional story, for which the paper
would offer cash prizes. Eventually the Clipper would drop “Sporting”
from its motto and focus exclusively on theater, cinema, and state fairs.
By 1856, Chadwick had been covering cricket matches for a decade
for the Clipper. Returning from one such match, he happened to pass the
Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, where many of New York’s and
Brooklyn’s teams would come to play, open space being much easier to
come by on the west bank of the Hudson. “The game was being sharply
played on both sides, and I watched it with deeper interest than any pre-
vious ball game between clubs that I had seen,” he would later recall. “It
was not long, therefore, after I had become interested in baseball, before I
began to invent a method of giving detailed reports of leading contests at
baseball.”2 Those detailed reports were box scores, and while he did not
invent them he did much to develop and expand them.
On August 9, 1856, describing a game in which the Union Club of
Morrisania, New York, defeated the New York Baltics 23
17, the
Clipper published what was the forerunner of the line score, a table of
runs and hands out with the hitters on the vertical axis and innings on
the horizontal. The first actual line score would appear on June 13, 1857,
for the season opener between the Eagles and the Knickerbockers, with
each team’s inning-by-inning tallies listed separately on its respective side
of the box score. The line score would not appear in the Clipper again
until September 5, describing a six-inning “match between the light and
heavy weights of the St. Nicholas Base Ball Clubs on the 25th”3
of August, this time listed vertically. In the following week’s edition,
Chadwick generated the first modern line score, horizontally with both
teams together. The following season saw the first pitch counts. In an

2
Quoted in Schwarz, A. (2004). The Numbers Game: Baseball’s lifelong fascination with
numbers (p. 4). New York, NY: St. Martin’s Griffin.
3
Light vs. heavy. The New York Clipper, V(20), September 5, 1857, 159.
4 Optimal Sports Math, Statistics, and Fantasy

August 7, 1858, game between Resolute of Brooklyn and the Niagara

Club of South Brooklyn, won by Resolute 30
17 when play was halted
after eight innings because of darkness, a whopping 812 pitches were
thrown. Resolute’s R.S. Canfield threw 359 pitches, including 128 in
one inning, with John Shields of Niagara tossing 453. At the plate, both
scored four runs. The lineup section of this box score still included just
hands out (now called “hands lost” or just “H. L.”) and runs. It would be
the late 1870s before the box score would settle into a generally consistent
format. Alfred H. Wright, a former player who later wrote for the
Philadelphia Sunday Mercury before becoming the Clipper’s baseball editor,
was the first to publish league standings, described in 1889 as “the
checker-board arrangement now universally used to show the progress of
the championship grade.”4
In the December 10, 1859, edition of the Clipper, Chadwick gener-
ated a three-section season recap of the Brooklyn Excelsiors. “Analysis of
the Batting” included games played (“matches played in”), outs made
(“hands lost”), runs, and home runs for the 17 players, as well as the per-
game means, maxima, and minima for hands lost and runs. The mean
was formatted in the cricket style of average and over, meaning dividend
and remainder; with 31 hands lost in 11 games (2 9/11), Arthur
Markham’s average and over was listed as 2
9. “Analysis of the Fielding”
consisted of total putouts “on the Fly,” “on the Bound,” and “on the
Base,” as well as per-game maxima and the number of games in which no
putouts of each type were recorded, followed by total number of games,
total number of putouts, and average and over for putouts per game.
“Additional Statistics” contained paragraphs of what we today might con-
sider trivia: highest (62) and lowest-scoring (3), longest (3:55) and short-
est (1:50), and earliest (May 12) and latest (October 25) games; the
number of innings in which no runs were scored (29 of 133) and in
which the Excelsiors scored in double figures (6). Chadwick acknowl-
edged that there were gaps in his analysis, but nonetheless prevailed upon
his dear readers to fear not:
As we were not present at all the matches, we are unable to give any infor-
mation as to how the players were put out. Next season, however, we intend
keeping the correct scores of every contest, and then we shall have data for a
full analysis. As this is the first analysis of a Base Ball Club we have seen

4
Palmer, H. C., et al. (1889). Athletic sports in America, England and Australia
(pp. 577
578). New York, NY: Union House Publishing.
 How They Play the Game 5

published, it is of course capable of improvement, and in our analysis of the

other prominent clubs, which we intend giving as fast as prepared, we shall
probably be able to give further particulars of interest to our readers.5
The only table in the “Additional Statistics” section was a list of who
played the most games at each position; Ed Russell pitched in eight of
the Excelsiors’ 15 games in 1859, and, strikingly from a modern perspec-
tive, that was the only time pitching is mentioned in the entire report.
But at second glance, perhaps it’s not so surprising that pitching was an
afterthought. In the early days of baseball, the pitcher was the least impor-
tant member of the team. He was required to throw underhand, as one
would pitch horseshoes, which was how the position got its name. It also
took some years before a rule change allowed him to snap his wrist as he
delivered the ball. There were essentially two strike zones: the batter (or
“striker” as he would be called) could request either a high pitch, mean-
ing between the shoulders and the waist, or a low pitch, between the
waist and the knees. If a striker requested a high pitch, and the pitcher
threw one at mid-thigh level, the pitch would be called a ball, even if it
went right over the middle of the plate. It took nine balls before the
striker would be awarded first base, and a foul ball was no play, so strike-
outs were rare; even so, Chadwick considered a strikeout as a failure by
the batter and not a mark in favor of the pitcher, which it officially would
not become until 1889. With so few opportunities for strategy, it would
be the pitcher’s job, more or less, to get the strikers to put the ball in
play, which they did with great regularity. Fielding was much more of an
adventure—the first baseball glove was still a decade away, and wouldn’t
become customary for two more after that; a single ball would last the
entire game, regardless of how dirty or tobacco juice-stained or deformed
it might become—so double-digit error totals were as common as
double-digit run totals. Until 1865 some box scores even had a dedicated
column for how many times each batter reached base on an error right
next to the column for hits. As today, the statistical analysis reflected those
aspects of the game considered most important.
But in another sense, statistics are separate from the game. We can
change the way we record the events of the game and the significance we
impart to them without changing the game itself. As Shakespeare might
have put it, that which we call a walk by any other name would still place
a runner on first base. Such was the case in 1887, when baseball’s

5
Excelsior club. The New York Clipper, VII(34), December 10, 1859, 268.
6 Optimal Sports Math, Statistics, and Fantasy

statistical rules were modified to consider bases on balls as base hits in

order to artificially inflate batting averages. “Baseball’s increasing audience
seemed fascinated with batting stars,” wrote the great sportswriter
Leonard Koppett. “Batting stars were usually identified by their high bat-
ting averages, as the dissemination of annual and daily statistics continued
to grow.”6 The batting average had been around since 1868—the Clipper
analyses presented each player’s “Average in game of bases on hits,” doing
so in decimals rather than average-and-over format. In 1876, announcing
the conditions for its batting title, the National League adopted hits
divided by at-bats as the definition of batting average and, for better or
for worse, it has remained the go-to number for evaluating a hitter’s
prowess at the plate ever since.
Scoring walks as hits had an effect: batting averages leaguewide sky-
rocketed, though they received an additional boost from some other
whimsical changes to the actual rules of play—pitchers could only take
one step when delivering rather than a running start and, perhaps most
glaring of all, it became one, two, three, four strikes you’re out at the old
ball game. Some sportswriters began referring to walks as “phantoms.”
Chadwick’s Clipper was not impressed with “the absurdities of the so-
called official batting averages of the National League for 1887” and
refused to go along. “The idea of giving a man a base-hit when he gets
his base on balls is not at all relished here. Base-hits will be meaningless
now, as no one can be said to have earned his base who has reached first
on balls.”7 Its pages considered the Phillies’ Charlie Buffinton as having
thrown two consecutive one-hitters, first shutting out Indianapolis 5
0
on August 6 and then having the Cubs “at his mercy, only one safe hit
being made off him, and that was a scratch home-run”8 in a 17
4 romp
3 days later; officially, with walks as hits though, they went down as a
three-hitter and a five-hitter. Chadwick’s bulletins gave two batting
averages for each player, one “actual” and one “under National League
rules.” The differences were substantial: Cap Anson won the batting title
over Sam Thompson, .421 to .407, but without the rule, Thompson
would best Anson, .372 to .347. In 1968, baseball’s Special Records
Commission formally removed walks from all 1887 batting averages,
6
Koppett, L. (1998). Koppett’s concise history of major league baseball (p. 54). Philadelphia, PA:
Temple University Press.
7
From the hub. The New York Clipper, XXXIV(38), December 4, 1886, 603.
8
Baseball: Chicago vs. Philadelphia. The New York Clipper, XXXV(No. 23), August 20,
1887, 361.
 How They Play the Game 7

though Anson is still officially the 1887 National League batting cham-
pion. Overall, the National League hit a combined .321. Of players who
appeared in at least 100 games, more hit over .380 than under .310.
Throw out the walks, and it’s a different story: the league average dips 52
points to .269, and the median among those with 100 games played
plunges from .343 to .285. The story was the same in the American
Association, whose collective average was .330, inflated from .273. Its bat-
ting crown went to Tip O’Neill of the Louisville Colonels, who was over
.500 for much of the year before a late slump dragged him down to a pal-
try .485 (at the time listed as .492). Six batters with 100 games played
broke .400, twice as many as were under .300. And after all of that, atten-
dance remained more or less flat. In the face of considerable opposition
to walks-as-hits, the Joint Rules Committee of the National League and
American Association abandoned the new rule following the 1887 season,
reverting the strikeout to three strikes as well. Despite the outcry, it’s
important to note that counting walks in the batting average did not
change the game itself, only the way it was measured.
There were a few rare situations in which players and managers would
allow statistics to influence their approach to the game. Chadwick, who
by 1880 had spawned an entire generation of stat-keepers, was concerned
about this: “The present method of scoring the game and preparing
scores for publication is faulty to the extreme, and it is calculated to drive
players into playing for their records rather than for their side.” In the late
1880s, with batting averages dominating the statistical conversation, some
hitters were reluctant to lay down a bunt—sure, it might advance a run-
ner, but at what cost? They “always claimed that they could not sacrifice
to advantage,” The New York Times reported. “In reality they did not care
to, as it impaired their batting record.”9 Scorekeepers started recording
sacrifices in 1889 but would still charge the hitter with an at-bat; this was
changed in 1893 but it would be a year before anyone actually paid atten-
tion to it and three more before it was generally accepted. Another such
scenario is of much more recent vintage with the evolution of the mod-
ern bullpen. The save had been an official statistic since 1969, but as the
turn of the century approached and relief pitching became much more
regimented—assigned into roles like the closer, the set-up guy, the long
man, and the LOOGY (lefty one-out guy, one of baseball’s truly great
expressions)—it became customary and even expected that the closer,

9
Quoted in Schwarz, p. 19.
8 Optimal Sports Math, Statistics, and Fantasy

ostensibly the best arm in the pen, would only be called in to pitch with
a lead of at least one but no more than three runs in the ninth inning or
later. Sure, the game might be on the line an inning or two earlier with
the bases loaded and the opposition’s best slugger up, but conventional
wisdom dictates that you can’t bring the closer in then because it’s not a
“save situation.” When the visiting team is playing an extra-inning game,
the closer is almost never brought in when the score is tied, even though
in a tie game there is no margin for error—if a single run scores the game
is over—whereas in the “save situation” he can allow one, possibly two,
or maybe even three runs without losing the game.
Over the years, other statistics would begin to emerge from a variety
of sources. A newspaper in Buffalo began to report runs batted in (RBI)
as part of its box scores in 1879; a year later the Chicago Tribune would
include that figure in White Stocking player stats, though it would not
continue that practice into 1881. In his Baseball Cyclopedia, published in
1922, Ernest J. Lanigan wrote of the RBI that “Chadwick urged the
adoption of this feature in the middle [18]80s, and by 1891 carried his
point so that the National League scorers were instructed to report this
data. They reported it grudgingly, and finally were told they wouldn’t
have to report it.”10 By 1907 the RBI was being revived by the New York
Press, and thirteen years later it became an official statistic at the request
of the Baseball Writers Association of America, though that didn’t neces-
sarily mean that others were enamored of it. For one, The New York
Times didn’t include RBIs in its box scores for another eight years, when
it placed them in the paragraph beneath the line score alongside other sta-
tistics like extra base hits and sacrifice flies. And it wasn’t until 1958 that
the Times moved the RBI into its own column in the lineup, where we
expect it to be today.
Occasionally a new statistic would arise from the contestants them-
selves. Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Sherry Magee had a tendency to
intentionally hit a fly ball to the outfield to drive in a runner on third,
and his manager Billy Murray didn’t think that an at-bat should be
charged against Magee’s batting average in such situations. His lobbying
efforts were successful, as on February 27, 1908, the major leagues created
a new statistic—this “sacrifice fly” would find itself in and out of favor
and on and off the list of official statistics before finally establishing
itself in 1954. Perhaps with an eye toward his own situation, in 1912,

10
Lanigan, E. Baseball cyclopedia, p. 89.
 How They Play the Game 9

Detroit Tigers catcher Charles Schmidt requested that scorers keep track
of base runners caught stealing; before then, the only dedicated catching
statistic was the passed ball.
Some statistics underwent changes and evolutions. In 1878, Abner
Dalrymple of the Milwaukee Grays hit .356 to win the National League
batting title, but only because at that time tie games were not included in
official statistics. Had they been, Dalrymple would have lost out to
Providence’s Paul Hines, .358 to .354. They later would be, but unfortu-
nately for Hines, this would not happen until 1968, 33 years after his
death, when he was recognized as having won not only the 1878 batting
title but also, by virtue of his 4 home runs and of the 50 RBIs for which
he was retroactively credited, baseball’s first-ever Triple Crown. When the
stolen base was introduced in 1886, it was defined as any base advanced by
a runner without the benefit of a hit or an error; thus a runner who went
from first to third on a single would be considered to have advanced from
first to second on the base hit, and to have stolen third. In 1898 this defi-
nition was revised to our modern understanding of a stolen base, and the
notion of defensive indifference—not crediting an uncontested stolen base
late in a lopsided game—followed in 1920. Also in 1898, the National
League clarified that a hit should not be awarded for what we now know
as a fielder’s choice, and errors should not automatically be charged on
exceptionally difficult chances.
The first inkling of the notion of an earned run dates back to 1867,
when Chadwick’s box scores began reporting separately runs that scored
on hits and runs that scored on errors; even so, to him it was a statistic
about batting and fielding, not pitching, much like he considered strike-
outs about batting, not pitching, and stolen bases about fielding, not base-
running. For the 1888 season, the Joint Rules Committee established
that a “base on the balls will be credited against the pitcher in the error
column.”11 The Clipper opined that “[t]here must be some mistake in this
matter, as it will be impossible to make a base on balls a factor in estimat-
ing earned runs if the rule, as stated above, charges an error to the pitcher
for each base on balls.”11 (This is not to say that Chadwick was necessarily
on the right side of history about everything. In the same article, he refers
to pinch hitters—“the question of each club having one or more extra
men in uniform who may be introduced into the game at any time”—as
a “dangerous innovation.”) Chadwick resisted the notion of the earned

11
Amending the rules. The New York Clipper, XXXV(36), November 19, 1887, 576.
10 Optimal Sports Math, Statistics, and Fantasy

run as a pitching metric until his death in 1908. In August 1912,

National League Secretary John Heydler began recording earned runs
officially and created a new statistic, the earned run average (ERA),
which he defined not as earned runs per game, but as earned runs per
nine innings. The American League would follow suit for the start of the
1913 season. As relief pitching became more of a factor in the modern
game, the statistics had to be updated to reflect that. A pitcher’s ERA, of
course, reflects only earned runs and not unearned runs, which are runs
that the team at bat scores by virtue of some sort of failure by the team in
the field, namely a passed ball or an error other than catcher’s interfer-
ence, that they would not have scored otherwise. Whether a given run
that scores after an error is committed is earned or unearned depends on
the game situation. The official scorer is charged with reconstructing the
inning as if the error had not occurred, using his best judgment with
regard to where the base runners would have ended up, and to record as
unearned any run that scored after there would have been three outs.
Thus if a batter reaches on an error with the bases empty and two outs,
any run that scores for the rest of that inning would be unearned, since
the error obviated what should have been the third out. This was good
news for a relief pitcher, as he could enter the game in that situation and
allow any number of runs—they all would be unearned and his ERA
would only go down. In 1969 the earned run rule was changed so that a
reliever could not take advantage of the fact that an error had occurred
before he entered the game. Now any run charged to his record during
the inning in which he came on to pitch would be an earned run (bar-
ring, of course, another two-out error). One shortcoming of the ERA
with respect to relief pitchers is that runs are charged to whichever
pitcher put the scoring runner on base, not who allowed the runner to
score. A relief pitcher entering a game with a runner on first base who
serves up a two-run home run to the first batter he faces would only be
charged with one run. The run scored by the man on first would be
charged to the previous pitcher, even though he allowed the runner to
advance only one base compared to three by the reliever.
With the evolution of all of these statistical categories, it wasn’t long
before writers and analysts began to use them prospectively rather than
simply retrospectively, launching a science that continues today. Hugh
Fullerton was a Chicago-based sportswriter who was unusual for includ-
ing direct quotes from players and managers in his articles. He also was a
careful observer of the game, and would achieve lasting fame for his
 How They Play the Game 11

statistical analyses of the Chicago White Sox in the World Series. In

1906, the first cross-town World Series pitted the White Sox against the
Cubs, the dominating champions of the National League. The 1906 Cubs
won 116 games, a record not matched until 2001 (although the 116
46
Seattle Mariners required seven more games to do it than the 116
36
3
Cubs), including an unparalleled 60
15 record on the road. Aside from the
celebrated infield of Tinker, Evers, and Chance, the “Spuds,” as they were
sometimes called, were led on the mound by future Hall of Famer Mordecai
“Three Finger” Brown, who went 26
6 with nine shutouts. They won the
National League by 20 games over the New York Giants, and scored half a
run more and allowed half a run fewer per game than anyone else. On the
South Side, the White Sox and their respectable 93 wins edged the New
York Yankees by just three games. Their offense scored 3.68 runs per game,
just barely above the league average of 3.66, and their league-worst .230 team
batting average and seven total home runs earned them the dubious nick-
name of “The Hitless Wonders.” What chance could they have possibly had
in the World Series against the most dominant ball club in history?
Plenty, thought Fullerton. “The White Sox will win it—taking four
out of the first six games . . . winning decisively, although out-hit during
the entire series.”12 He acknowledged that the Cubs were “the best ball
club in the world and perhaps the best that was ever organized . . . [b]ut
even the best ball club in the world is beatable.” So sure of this was
Fullerton that he promised to “find a weeping willow tree, upon which I
will hang my score book and mourn” if his prediction didn’t come true.
His confidence stemmed from what he called “doping,” a term that
referred to something far different then than it does today. Fullerton
described doping in a 1915 article published in the Washington Times:
“We will first take every player on the two teams that are to fight for
the championship, and study the statistics. We will find out what each
man bats against right and left-handed pitchers, against speed pitching,
and against slow pitching. We will figure his speed, aggressiveness, con-
dition, and disposition.” He would then take these analyses and meet
with the players, their teammates, their opponents, and “men who
know him better than I do.”13 He would then rate the players on
batting, fielding, and value to his team on a scale of 0 to 1000, adding

12
Fullerton, H.S. (October 15, 1906). Series verifies Fullerton’s Dope. The Chicago Tribune, 4.
13
Fullerton, H.S. (September 27, 1915). Hugh S. Fullerton explains his famous system of
‘Doping’ the Greatest Series of the Diamond. The Washington Times, 11.
12 Optimal Sports Math, Statistics, and Fantasy

or subtracting for factors such as defensive position or their physical

and psychological state. “[Ty] Cobb’s total value to his team in a season
I figure at 850. Now, it makes no difference whether we say Cobb is
750 or 500 or 250. It is an arbitrary figure assumed for purposes of
comparison.”13 Since there was no interleague play, Fullerton handi-
capped the batting matchups based on pitchers the hitters had faced
who were similar to those they would be facing in the World Series.
He also considered what we today would call “park factors.”
Fullerton concluded that Brown was “the kind of pitcher the Sox will
beat.”14 The Cubs’ leading hitter at .327, third baseman Harry Steinfeldt,
was “not that good a hitter. He never hit .300 in his life before, and proba-
bly never would again.” He reckoned that the offensive disparity between
the two teams was misleading because “[a]n American league batter is hit-
ting against good pitching about six games out of seven,” twice as often as a
National Leaguer. When his analysis was complete, he predicted that the
White Sox would win in six games. It wasn’t actually printed until October
15, the day after the White Sox did indeed win the 1906 World Series in
six games, because, the editor’s note explained, a “man in authority refused
to take a chance in printing Mr. Fullerton’s forecast, but it has been verified
so remarkably by the games as played that it is now printed just as it was
written.”15 The White Sox did beat Three Finger Brown in two of his three
starts. Steinfeldt hit .250 in the World Series, and never hit .270 for a season
again, let alone .300. Fullerton would continue his World Series doping,
and in 1919 would be instrumental in uncovering the Black Sox conspiracy.
Hugh Fullerton would be followed by others. Ferdinand Cole Lane
had a scientific background, working as a biologist for Boston University
and the Massachusetts Commission of Fisheries and Game before editing
for many years a monthly called the Baseball Magazine. F.C. Lane, as he
was known, was an early proponent of run expectancy and a fierce critic
of batting average, calling it “worse than worthless”16 as a statistic for
evaluating prowess at the plate.17 “Suppose you asked a close personal

14
Fullerton. Series verifies Fullerton’s Dope.
15
Fullerton. Series verifies Fullerton’s Dope (editor’s note).
16
Quoted in Schwarz, p. 34.
17
In 1925, Lane published Batting: One thousand expert opinions on every conceivable angle of
batting science. In an apparent about-face, he concluded the chapter “What the Records
Tell Us” thusly: “To sum up, baseball owes a great deal to the records. Batting averages
are the most accurate of these records. They serve as the only fair basis for comparing
old time batters with modern hitters, or in comparing one present-day hitter with
another.” Lane, Batting, p. 14.
24 Optimal Sports Math, Statistics, and Fantasy

objective to subjective means: the poll and the All-America Team. The
first All-America Team dates back to 1889 and was compiled by Walter
Camp, perhaps the most prominent of modern football’s founding fathers,
and possibly in collaboration with Caspar Whitney of Week’s Sport. Soon
it seemed that everyone wanted to jump aboard the All-America Team
bandwagon; by 1909 the Official Football Guide contained 35 of them.
“The popularity of the All-America Team spread quickly as the sport
itself grew more popular and it became part of the duty of a sports writer
to get up one of his own for publication,” wrote L.H. Baker. “Ex-coaches
were invited to make up lists for newspapers and other publications.”31
But the All-America Team was just a list of players from the late season.
Who would make up a team of the best players ever? Enter the All-Time
Team. The first such list appeared in the New York Evening World in 1904,
and it tells us something about player evaluation at that time. The “All-
Time All-Player” list was comprised entirely of gridders from Harvard,
Yale, and Princeton, along with one from Army, each a northeastern
school. Camp’s All-Time Team from 1910 reflected the fact that he had
traveled more extensively and seen more games himself, as it included
players from Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Chicago. These were soon fol-
lowed by All-Eastern teams, All-Western teams, All-Conference teams,
and All-State teams; individual schools even named All-Opponent teams.
Football grew so popular that one couldn’t narrow down the best to a
squad of 11, which begat the second- and third-team All Americas. With
the rise of the one-way player in the late 1940s, begun by Fritz Crisler
of Michigan in a game against Army in 1945, there would of course be
separate All-America teams for offense and defense, debuting in 1950.
Subjective means have also been a huge factor in announcing the sea-
son’s national champion. Major college football is unique in that it is the
only sport in which the NCAA itself does not recognize a national cham-
pion. Founded in 1906 primarily as a rules-making body, the NCAA
awarded its first national title in 1921 to Illinois at the National Track and
Field Championship. By the time of that first NCAA national champion-
ship, intercollegiate football was already over 50 years old. The stronger
football schools had since organized themselves into conferences, the old-
est of which were the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association,
founded in 1894, and the Big Ten, formed as the Western Conference in
1896. Other conferences included the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate

31
Baker, L.H. p. 142.
Another random document with
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above my hips, and fell down at the foot of a tree on the other side.
About a quarter of an hour’s halt took place here for the benefit of
stragglers, and to tie poor Boo-Khaloom’s body on a horse’s back, at
the end of which Maramy awoke me from a deep sleep, and I found
my strength wonderfully increased: not so, however, our horse, for
he had become stiff, and could scarcely move. As I learnt
afterwards, a conversation had taken place about me, while I slept,
which rendered my obligations to Maramy still greater: he had
reported to Barca Gana the state of his horse, and the impossibility
of carrying me on, when the chief, irritated by his losses and defeat,
as well as at my having refused his horse, by which means, he said,
it had come by its death, replied, “Then leave him behind. By the
head of the Prophet! believers enough have breathed their last to-
day. What is there extraordinary in a Christian’s death?” “Raas il
Nibbe-Salaam Yassarat il le mated el Yeom ash min gieb l’can e mut
Nesserani Wahad.” My old antagonist Malem Chadily replied, “No,
God has preserved him; let us not forsake him!” Maramy returned to
the tree, and said “his heart told him what to do.” He awoke me,
assisted me to mount, and we moved on as before, but with tottering
steps and less speed. The effect produced on the horses that were
wounded by poisoned arrows was extraordinary: immediately after
drinking they dropped, and instantly died, the blood gushing from
their nose, mouth, and ears. More than thirty horses were lost at this
spot from the effects of the poison.
In this way we continued our retreat, and it was after midnight
when we halted in the sultan of Mandara’s territory. Riding more than
forty-five miles, in such an unprovided state, on the bare back of a
lean horse, the powerful consequences may be imagined. I was in a
deplorable state the whole night; and notwithstanding the irritation of
the flesh wounds was augmented by the woollen covering the Arab
had thrown over me, teeming as it was with vermin, it was evening
the next day before I could get a shirt, when one man who had two,
both of which he had worn eight or ten days at least, gave me one,
on a promise of getting a new one at Kouka. Barca Gana, who had
no tent but the one he had left behind him with his women at Mora,
on our advance, could offer me no shelter; and he was besides so ill,
or chagrined, as to remain invisible the whole day. I could scarcely
turn from one side to the other, but still, except at intervals when my
friend Maramy supplied me with a drink made from parched corn,
bruised, and steeped in water, a grateful beverage, I slept under a
tree nearly the whole night and day, of the 29th. Towards the evening
I was exceedingly disordered and ill, and had a pleasing proof of the
kind-heartedness of a Bornouese.
Mai Meegamy, the dethroned sultan of a country to the south-west
of Angornou, and now subject to the sheikh, took me by the hand as
I had crawled out of my nest for a few minutes, and with many
exclamations of sorrow, and a countenance full of commiseration,
led me to his leather tent, and, sitting down quickly, disrobed himself
of his trowsers, insisting I should put them on. Really, no act of
charity could exceed this! I was exceedingly affected at so
unexpected a friend, for I had scarcely seen, or spoken three words
to him; but not so much so as himself, when I refused to accept of
them:—he shed tears in abundance; and thinking, which was the
fact, that I conceived he had offered the only ones he had,
immediately called a slave, whom he stripped of those necessary
appendages to a man’s dress, according to our ideas, and putting
them on himself, insisted again on my taking those he had first
offered me. I accepted this offer, and thanked him with a full heart;
and Meegamy was my great friend from that moment until I quitted
the sheikh’s dominions.
We found that forty-five of the Arabs were killed, and nearly all
wounded; their camels, and every thing they possessed, lost. Some
of them had been unable to keep up on the retreat, but had huddled
together in threes and fours during the night, and by showing
resistance, and pointing their guns, had driven the Felatahs off. Their
wounds were some of them exceedingly severe, and several died
during the day and night of the 29th; their bodies, as well as poor
Boo-Khaloom’s, becoming instantly swollen and black; and
sometimes, immediately after death, blood issuing from the nose and
mouth, which the Bornou people declared to be in consequence of
the arrows having been poisoned. The surviving Arabs, who had
now lost all their former arrogance and boasting, humbly entreated
Barca Gana to supply them with a little corn to save them from
starving. The sultan of Mandara behaved to them unkindly, though
not worse than they deserved, refused all manner of supplies, and
kept Boo-Khaloom’s saddle, horse-trappings, and the clothes in
which he died. He also began making preparations for defending
himself against the Felatahs, who, he feared, might pay him a visit;
and on the morning of the 30th April we left Mora, heartily wishing
them success, should they make the attempt.
Boo-Khaloom’s imprudence in having suffered himself to be
persuaded to attack the Felatahs became now apparent, as
although, in case of his overcoming them, he might have
appropriated to himself all the slaves, both male and female, that he
found amongst them; yet the Felatahs themselves were Moslem,
and he could not have made them slaves. He was, however, most
likely deceived by promises of a Kerdy country to plunder, in the
event of his success against these powerful people, alike the
dreaded enemies of the sheikh and the sultan of Mandara.
My wounded horse, which had been caught towards the evening
of the fight by the Shouaas, and brought to me, was in too bad a
state for me to mount, and Barca Gana procured me another. My
pistols had been stolen from the holsters; but, fortunately, my saddle
and bridle, though broken, remained. Thus ended our most
unsuccessful expedition; it had, however, injustice and oppression
for its basis, and who can regret its failure?
We returned with great expedition, considering the wretched state
we were in. On the sixth day after our departure from Mora, we
arrived in Kouka, a distance of one hundred and eighty miles: the
wounded Arabs remained behind, being unable to keep up with the
chief, and did not arrive until four days after us. I suffered much, both
in mind and body, but complained not; indeed all complaint would
have been ill-timed, where few were enduring less than myself. My
black servant had lost mule, canteens, and every thing, principally
from keeping too near me in the action; and, by his obeying implicitly
the strict orders I had given him not to fire on the Felatahs, he had
narrowly escaped with his life. Bruised and lame, he could render me
no assistance, and usually came in some hours after we had halted
on our resting-ground. In the mid-day halts I usually crept under Mai
Meegamy’s tent; but at night I laid me down on the ground, close to
that of Barca Gana, in order that my horse might get a feed of corn. I
always fell into a sound sleep at night, as soon as I lay down, after
drinking Maramy’s beverage, who had supplied me with a little bag
of parched corn, which he had procured at Mora; and about midnight
a slave of the chief, whose name was, most singularly like my own,
Denhamah, always awoke me, to eat some gussub, paste, and fat,
mixed with a green herb called meloheia in Arabic. This was thrust
out from under Barca Gana’s tent, and consisted generally of his
leavings: pride was sometimes nearly choking me, but hunger was
the paramount feeling: I smothered the former, ate, and was
thankful. It was in reality a great kindness; for besides myself and the
chief, not one, I believe, in the remnant of our army, tasted any thing
but engagy, parched corn and cold water, during the whole six days
of our march. On the night of the 4th of May we arrived at Angornou.
The extreme kindness of the sheikh, however, was some
consolation to me, after all my sufferings. He said, in a letter to Barca
Gana, “that he should have grieved had any thing serious happened
to me; that my escape was providential, and a proof of God’s
protection; and that my head was saved for good purposes.” He also
sent me some linen he had procured from our huts at Kouka, and a
dress of the country; and the interest taken by their governor in the
fate of such a kaffir, as they thought me, increased exceedingly the
respect of his servants towards me. The next morning we arrived at
the capital.
I presented Barca Gana with a brace of French ornamented
pistols, and with pink taffeta sufficient for a tobe, which he received
with great delight. The sheikh sent me a horse in lieu of the wounded
one which I had left at Merty, with but small hopes of his recovery;
and my bruises and wounds, which were at first but trifling, got well
so surprisingly quick, from the extreme low diet I had from necessity
been kept to, that I was not in so bad a condition as might have been
expected. My losses, however, were severe; my trunk with nearly all
my linen, my canteens, a mule, my azimuth compass, my drawing-
case, with a sketch of the hills, were also lost, although I obtained
another sketch the morning of our quitting Mora. Such events,
however, must sometimes be the consequence of exploring
countries like these. The places I had visited were full of interest, and
could never have been seen, except by means of a military
expedition, without still greater risk. The dominions of the sheikh, in
consequence of his being so extraordinarily enlightened for an
inhabitant of central Africa, appear to be open to us; but on looking
around, when one sees dethroned sultans nearly as common as
bankrupts in England; where the strong arm for the time being has
hitherto changed the destiny of kings and kingdoms; no discoveries
can be accomplished beyond this, without the greatest hazard both
of life and property.
The sheikh laid all the blame of the defeat upon the Mandara
troops, and assured me that I should see how his people fought
when he was with them, in an expedition which he contemplated
against Munga, a country to the west. I told him that I was quite
ready to accompany him; and this assurance seemed to give him
particular satisfaction.
Of the Mandara chain, and its surrounding and incumbent hills,
though full of interest, I regret my inability to give a more perfect
account. Such few observations, however, as struck me on my
visiting them, I shall lay before the reader. It is on occasions like this,
that a traveller laments the want of extensive scientific knowledge. I
must therefore request those under whose eye these remarks may
come to regard them in the light they are offered, not as pretensions
to knowledge, but merely very humble endeavours at communicating
information to the best of my ability.
The elevation gradually increases in advancing towards the
equator; and the soil, on approaching Delow, where the
northernmost point of the Mandara chain commences, is covered
with a glittering micaceous sand, principally decomposed granite,
which forms a productive earth. The hills extend in apparently
interminable ridges east-south-east, south-west, and west; while to
the south several masses or systems of hills, if I may so express
myself, spread themselves out in almost every picturesque form and
direction that can be imagined. Those nearest the eye apparently do
not exceed 2500 feet in height; but the towering peaks which appear
in the distance are several thousand feet higher. They are composed
of enormous blocks of granite, both detached and reclining on each
other, presenting the most rugged faces and sides. The interstices
and fissures appeared to be filled with a yellow quartzose earth, in
which were growing mosses and lichens: trees of considerable size
also grow from between them. On almost all the hills that I
approached, clusters of huts were seen in several places towards
the centre, and sometimes quite at the summit; generally on the flats
of the ridges. At the base of these mountains, and also at a
considerable elevation on their sides, are incumbent masses of what
appeared to be the decomposed fragments of primitive rocks
recompounded, and united anew by a species of natural cement. At
some distance from the base of those which I ascended from the
valley of Mora, were collections of quartzose rocks, of great variety
and colour; fragments of hornblende, and several large abutments of
porphyroidal rocks. About one hundred yards above the spring which
I have before mentioned, in a space between two projecting masses
of rock, were numerous shells, some petrified and finely preserved,
while others were perforated by insects, worm-eaten, and destroyed:
they were confusedly mixed with fragments of granite, quartz, sand
and clay; and in some cases adhered to pieces of the composition
rocks: the greater part were of the oyster kind. Various specimens of
these, with pieces of every variety of the structure of the hills, I had
collected, but they were all lost in the general confusion of the battle;
and on the return of the army I was unable to do more than procure
a few specimens of the northernmost part of the mountains; and the
half of these were lost by my negro.
Of the extent of this chain, or rather these groups of mountains, I
can form no idea, except from the information of the Mandara
people. I have met with a man who (by the way) wanted to persuade
me that he was a son of Hornemann by his slave, although, from his
appearance, he must have been born ten years before that
unfortunate traveller entered this country. He said he had been
twenty days south of Mandara, to a country called Adamowa, which
he described as being situated in the centre of a plain surrounded by
mountains ten times higher than any we could see; that he went first
to Mona or Monana, which was five days, and then to Bogo, which
was seven more; and here, for one Soudan tobe, the sultan gave
him four slaves. After eight days’ travelling from this latter country, he
arrived at Adamowa. These people, he says (that is, the Kerdies on
the hills; for Adamowa itself is occupied by Felatahs), eat the flesh of
horses, mules, and asses, or of any wild animal that they kill: nobody
but the sultans and their children are clothed; all the rest of the
nation go naked; the men sometimes wear a skin round the loins, but
the women nothing. This man, who was called Kaid-Moussa-ben-
Yusuf (Hornemann’s name), spoke to me of several extensive lakes
which he had seen in this journey, and also described with great
clearness a river running between two very high ridges of the
mountains, which he crossed previous to arriving at Adamowa. This
river he declared to run from the west, and to be the same as the
Quolla or Quana at Nyffe, Kora, and at Raka, but not the same as
the river at Kano, which had nothing to do with the Shary, and which
ran into the Tchad; but the main body of the water ran on to the
south of Begharmi, was then called the D’Ago, and went eastward to
the Nile. Kaid-Moussa was a very intelligent fellow, had visited Nyffe,
Raka, Waday, and Darfur; by which latter place also, he said this
river passed. He was most particularly clear in all his accounts, and
his statement agreed in some points with the information a Shouaa
named Dreess-boo-Raas-ben-aboo-Deleel had given me; therefore I
was the more inclined to pay attention to it. To the south of this river,
the population is entirely Kerdy, until the Great Desert. This desert is
passed several times in the year by kafilas with white people, not
Christians, who bring goods from the great sea: some of these reach
Adamowa. He himself saw white loaf sugar, such as the merchants
brought here from Tripoli to the sheikh, and a gun or two, with metal
pots and pans, and arrack (rum). The inhabitants were unanimous in
declaring these mountains to extend southward for two months’
journey; and in describing them, Yusuf called them “kou kora, kora,
kantaga,”—mountains large, large, moon mountains. And from the
increased love of enterprise apparent in our rising generation, we
may one day hope to be as well acquainted with the true character of
these stupendous mountains as with the lofty peaks of the Andes.
The extreme southern peak which I could discern was that called
Mendify, which rose into the air with singular boldness. It was said to
be a distance from Musfeia of two long days’ journey,—say thirty-five
miles. At that distance, it had all the character of an alpine peak, of a
most patriarchal height. I could perceive with a glass other
mountains extending from its sides, the forms of which bore a
tranquil character, compared with the arid and steep peaks which
overlooked them. It resembled very much in appearance “Les
Arguilles,” as they appear looking at them from the Mer-de-Glace.
The following outline may serve to show their shape and character.

Iron is found in abundance in all the Mandara hills; but no other

metal, that I was informed of. All the houses or huts at Mandara have
outer doors to the court, which are made of pieces of wood, hasped
together with iron. They make hinges, small bars, and a sort of hoe
used to weed the corn, and send them for sale to the Bornou towns.
The iron they use is mostly brought from the west near Karowa. I
went to the house of a blacksmith, for the purpose of seeing some of
the metal in its natural state, and found four men with a very rude
forge, formed by a hole in the sand: the bellows were two kid skins,
with an iron tube fixed in each, which tubes were conveyed
underneath the fire. The wind was produced by a man blowing these
skins, which were open at the top to let in the air. Their hammers
were two pieces of iron, weighing about two pounds each, and a
coarse piece of the same metal for an anvil; and considering their
implements, they worked with some tact. I regretted much that I had
not an English hammer to give them. Large masses of the iron, as
nature produces it, were lying about; and they appeared to me as so
many rusty earthy masses.
In appearance, the people of Mandara differ from the Bornouese,
or Kanoury (as they call themselves); and the difference is all in
favour of the former. The men are intelligent and lively, with high
though flat foreheads, large sparkling eyes, wiry curled hair, noses
inclining to the aquiline, and features altogether less flattened than
the Bornouese. The women are proverbial for their good looks,—I
cannot say beauty. I must allow them, however, all their
acknowledged celebrity of form: they are certainly singularly gifted
with the Hottentot protuberance; their hands and feet are delightfully
small; and as these are all esteemed qualifications in the eye of a
Turk, Mandara slaves will always obtain an advanced price. Certainly
I never saw so much of them as when sporting in their native wilds,
with not so much covering on as one of Eve’s fig-leaves. A man who
took me to be a Moorish merchant led me to his house, in order to
show me the best looking slaves in Mandara. He had three, all under
sixteen, yet quite women; for these are precocious climes; and
certainly, for negresses, they were the most pleasing and perfectly
formed I had ever seen. They had simply a piece of blue striped
linen round their loins, yet they knew not their nakedness. Many of
these beauties are to be seen at Kouka and Angornou: they are
never, however, exposed in the fsug, but sold in the houses of the
merchants. So much depends on the magnitude of those attractions
for which their southern sisters are so celebrated, that I have known
a man about to make a purchase of one out of three, regardless of
the charms of feature, turn their faces from him, and looking at them
behind, just above the hips, as we dress a line of soldiers, make
choice of her whose person most projected beyond that of her
companions.
The day before the Rhamadan, which commenced on the 13th
instant (May), I had an interview with the sheikh, who mentioned his
intended departure for Munga; and after some conversation, it was
agreed that I should proceed to Old Bornou or Birnie; and after
seeing that part of the country, the ruins of the town of Gambarou,
and the river of that name, which is said to come from Soudan; that I
should follow its course, and join him at a place called Kabshary on
the same river, to which he was about to proceed by a different
route. The whole population was in confusion at the departure of this
ghrazzie, and nearly all the people of Kouka, with the exception of
the kadi, were to accompany the sheikh. Previously, however, to his
departure, he had determined on sending off a courier to Tripoli, with
an account of Boo Khaloom’s death, and we availed ourselves of the
opportunity by writing to England. On the 17th of May the courier
departed; and on the 18th the sheikh began his march, and
bivouacked at Dowergoo.

FOOTNOTES:

[23]Silsel: irons placed round the necks of refractory slaves.

[24]The band also sang some extempore verses on my joining
them, of which the following is nearly a literal translation, and
delighted their chief excessively.
 Christian man he come,
Friend of us and sheikhobe;
White man, when he hear my song,
Fine new tobe give me.

Christian man all white,

And dollars white have he;
Kanourie like him come,
Black man’s friend to be.

See Felatah, how he run;

Barca Gana shake his spear:
White man carry two-mouthed gun,
That’s what make Felatah fear.

[25]A general term for unbelievers.

[26]Abdul Kassum-ben-Maliki came from this town, and speaks
of his people as having great influence with the sultan of
Timbuctoo: their language is alike; and he conversed as freely
with a Felatah slave from Musfeia, as if she had been his
countrywoman, although they were born probably fifteen hundred
miles distant from each other.
[27]A deputation of twenty-seven from Musfeia and Zouay had
but a short time before arrived at Mora, for the purpose of
arranging some detention of property belonging to them, which
had been seized by the Mandara people. They were admitted to a
parley; but had no sooner quitted the presence of the sultan, than
the throats of all of them were instantly cut by the eunuchs and
their slaves.
 CHAPTER IV.
EXCURSION TO MUNGA AND THE GAMBAROU.

May 21.—Ever since my return from Mandara, an expedition, to

be commanded by the sheikh in person, had been in agitation
against a numerous people to the west called Munga. These people
had never thoroughly acknowledged the sheikh’s supremacy, and
the collecting of their tribute had always been attended with difficulty
and bloodshed. They had, however, now thrown off all restraint, and
put to death about one hundred and twenty of the sheikh’s Shouaas,
and declared they would be no longer under his control, as the
sultan of Bornou was their king; and headed by a fighi of great
power, had begun to plunder and burn all the sheikh’s towns near
them. It was reported, and with some truth, that they could bring
12,000 bowmen into the field; by far the most efficient force to be
found in the black country. To oppose these, the sheikh assembled
his Kanemboo spearmen (who had accompanied him from their own
country, and assisted him in wresting Bornou from the hands of the
Felatahs), to the amount of between eight and nine thousand.
These, with about five thousand Shouaas and Bornou men,
composed the force with which he meant to subdue these rebels.
Another complaint against the Mungowy was, “That they were
kaffering[28], and not saying their prayers! the dogs.” This is,
however, a fault which is generally laid to the charge of any nation
against whom a true Musselman wages war, as it gives him the
power of making them slaves. By the laws of Mohammed, one
believer must not bind another.
Rhamadan, the period generally chosen for these expeditions,
had commenced, since the 13th May; and on the 8th, meaning to
take the town of Yeou, with the many others on the banks of the river
of that name in his way, both for the purpose of collecting forces and
tribute[29], the sheikh left Kouka for Dowergoo, a lake about six miles
distant, his women, tents, &c. having preceded him in the morning.
 Dr. Oudney and myself accompanied him outside the gates; and
at our request, he left Omar Gana, one of his chief slaves, to be our
guide to the old city of Bornou, which we were anxious to see; and
from whence we were to proceed to Kabshary, still farther to the
west, on the Gambarou, or Yeou, and there await his arrival.
May 22.—We left Kouka with five camels and four servants for
Birnie, halting in the middle of the day, and making two marches, of
from ten to fourteen miles, morning and evening. The country all
round Kouka is uninteresting and flat, the soil alluvial, and not a
stone of any kind to be seen, but thickly scattered with trees, mostly
acacias. We sometimes came to a few huts, and a well or two of
indifferent water; and a mess of rice from our stores was our usual
supper.
On the 24th, about noon, we arrived at the river Yeou, and halted
at a rather large nest of huts called Lada. We were now seventy
miles from Kouka. The river here makes a bend resembling the letter
S, the water extremely shallow, and a dry path over the bed of the
river appeared close to our halting-place, although the banks were
high, and capable of containing a very large stream. I walked out,
following the easterly course of the stream in search of game; but
within four hundred yards of the banks, the ground was so choked
with high grass and prickly underwood, that I was obliged to take a
path more inland, where a partial clearance had been made for the
sake of some scanty cotton plantations. Pursuing some Guinea fowl
across one of these, I was assailed by the cries of several women
and children, who having thrown down their water-jugs, were flying
from me in the greatest alarm. I however went on, but had not
proceeded above a quarter of a mile, when my negro pointed out
several men peeping from behind some thick bushes, and evidently
watching our motions. I desired him to be on his guard, as he carried
a carbine loaded with slugs; and we called repeatedly to them
without any effect. They had been alarmed by the women, who had
represented us to be Tuaricks, of whom they are constantly in dread,
as their country is not more than seven days distant from where
these marauders are often seen; and the extreme points of the
Bornou dominions they visit without fear. The inhabitants of these
wilds cannot be induced to quit their present homes; and they
patiently submit to have their flocks and children taken from them,
and their huts burnt, rather than seek a more secure residence in the
larger towns. They have, however, a manner of defending
themselves against these cruel invaders, which often enables them
to gratify their revenge: the ground is covered by the high grass and
jungle close to the banks of the rivers, and they dig very deep
circular holes, at the bottom of which are placed six or eight sharp
stakes, hardened by the fire, over the top of which they most artfully
lay the grass, so as to render it impossible to discover the deception.
An animal with its rider stepping on one of these traps is quickly
precipitated to the bottom, and not unfrequently both are killed on the
spot.
In returning to the tents with the people whom I had alarmed, and
who cautioned me not to proceed farther in that direction, I quite
trembled at the recollection of the various escapes I had had, as
some of these blaqua, as they are called, were not a yard distant
from the marks of my former footsteps.
The country near the banks of the river to the west is ornamented
by many very large tamarind and other trees, bearing a fruit
resembling a medlar, green and pleasant to the taste, and many of
the Mimosa tribe flourished in uncontrolled luxuriance. The
Googooroo, or Jujube, abounded; and these varieties of green gave
a life to the landscape that was quite new to us. The wild fruits even
were palatable; and selecting those on which the monkeys were
feeding, we devoured them fearlessly and eagerly,—their freshness
supplying the want of either flavour or sweetness. The monkeys, or
as the Arabs say, “men enchanted,”—“Ben Adam meshood,” were so
numerous, that I saw upwards of one hundred and fifty assembled in
one place in the evening. They did not at all appear inclined to give
up their ground, but, perched on the top of the bank some twenty
feet high, made a terrible noise; and rather gently than otherwise,
pelted us when we approached to within a certain distance. My
negro was extremely anxious to fire at them; but they were not, I
thought, considering their numbers, sufficiently presuming to deserve
such a punishment.
 May 25.—About two miles from Lada, we left the river, and halted
at noon near a small still water. Here were several flocks of geese,
and some of the species of bird called adjutant. These mid-day halts,
with only partial shade, were dreadfully sultry and oppressive. We
moved on in the afternoon, and passing another lake of the same
description, by nine in the evening came to one much larger, called
Engataranaram. Nothing could be more wild than the country we had
passed through this day; and compared with the sterile plains I had
lately been accustomed to, seemed rich and picturesque: it was one
continued wood, with narrow winding paths, to avoid the
overhanging branches of the prickly tulloh. The frequent foot-marks
of lions, the jackal, and hyena, gave us a pretty good idea of the
nature of the inhabitants; and their roarings at night convinced us
that they were at no great distance.
We had this morning met a kafila from Soudan, consisting of
about twenty persons, and bringing one hundred and twenty slaves;
and some hours after we saw the place where they had passed the
preceding night. They had lit their fires in the very centre of the path,
and made a good fence all round them of large branches of trees
and dry wood. This fence is sometimes set fire to, when their four-
footed visitors are numerous, and approach too near. Camels and
animals of every description are placed in the centre, and should one
stray in the night, he is seldom again recovered. Kafilas never travel
after dusk, particularly those on foot; and our negroes had such a
fright during the latter part of this day’s march, that they declared on
coming up with the camels, that their lives were in danger from such
late marches, an immense lion having crossed the road before them
only a few miles from where we halted. There can be little doubt, that
by their singing and number they had disturbed the lion from his lair,
as we must have passed within ten paces of the foot of the tree from
which he broke forth on their approach: they said that he had
stopped, and looked back at them, and if they had not had presence
of mind sufficient to pass on without at all noticing him, or appearing
alarmed, some one of the party would have suffered.
Drawn by Major Denham. Engraved by E. Finden.

THE RIVER GAMBAROU OF YEOU.

NEAR LADA.
Published Feb. 1826, by John Murray, London.

Previous to pitching our tents at night, the sheikh’s negro

examined the ground, and, after dismounting and listening attentively
for an instant, he declared some people to be near. We fired a gun,
which, after a little time, was answered by a shout, and at no great
distance we found about half a dozen Kabsharians, who said they
were on their way to Kouka, and near them we fixed ourselves for
the night. In these woods kafilas from Soudan are often robbed, and
the runaway negroes, who are good bowmen, pick off the leaders
from behind the trees, and then plunder the baggage: ten men from
one kafila had, we were informed, been so murdered during the last
year.
May 26.—We pursued a westerly course for eight miles to a lake
called Gumzaigee, about a mile in length, between which and
another called Gumzaigee-gana, the road lies; seven miles beyond
which is still another lake of considerable extent, called Muggaby, or
the lake of the sultan of Bornou: this is nearly three miles long, and
full half a mile broad; its banks are beautifully green, and its depth is
very great; it contains hippopotami in great numbers, and every now
and then their black heads appeared above the surface of the water.
A few straggling parties of Kanemboo infantry had occasionally
crossed our path, for several days, on their way to join the sheikh,
but here we found about a hundred and fifty Shouaas, or Arabs of
Beni Wah’l. After our tents were pitched, and we had refreshed
ourselves by a mess of ducks and rice, we determined on riding to
visit the remains of Old Birnie[30], which extended nearly to this lake.
We proceeded by the high road to Soudan, and after about two miles
came to the spot on which once stood the capital of Bornou, and the
ruins of the city certainly tended more strongly to convince us of the
power of its former sultans than any of the tales we had heard of
their magnificence: we had seen upwards of thirty large towns which
the Felatahs had completely razed to the ground at the time they
destroyed the capital, and we were now arrived at the ruins of that
capital itself[31]. Old Birnie covered a space of five or six square
miles, and is said to have had a population of two hundred thousand
souls: the remains of the walls were in many places still standing, in
large masses of hard red brick-work, and were from three to four feet
in thickness, and sixteen to eighteen feet in height. From the top of
one of these we obtained a sight of the river Gambarou, running
nearly east, notwithstanding its windings, and only a few miles
distant. At sunset we returned to our huts.
Crossing the head of the lake Muggaby, we took a north-westerly
direction, for the purpose of seeing the remaining ruins of this once
populous district, and particularly those of a favourite residence of
the former sultan, called Gambarou, situated on the banks of the
river, four miles distant, which comes from Soudan: this district gave
its name to the waters during their passage through it. After wading
through low grounds, occasionally overflowed, where the wild grass
was above our horses’ heads, and disturbing a herd of fourteen
elephants, whose retired haunts were seldom so broken in upon, we
came to the river, which is here a very noble stream, nearly a quarter
of a mile in breadth, and situated between two high banks thickly
overgrown with jungle, bushes, and bamboo[32]: we endeavoured to
ascertain if there was any current, but the water appeared perfectly
stationary. Omar Gana, however, and the Shouaas who had
accompanied us, were unanimous in declaring that after the rains a
very strong current from west to east constantly flowed.
We determined on remaining here the next day, and ordered the
tents to be pitched under the shade of an immense tamarind tree,
about two hundred and fifty yards from the bank of the river. The
water was sweet and palatable, and very gratifying to us after the
lake water we had been drinking for the last few days, though that
was nectar in comparison with the well-water near Kouka. The
shoals of fish that rushed quite close to, and sometimes on, the
shore, exceeded any thing I ever could have supposed, both as to
size and numbers: we waded, nearly up to our knees, to a little
island or sand-bank about ten yards from the land, and found the
marks of two good-sized crocodiles quite fresh.
Close to the bank, and just at the hollow of a slight curve in the
river’s course, fourteen years ago stood the town of Gambarou, the
chosen place of residence of the late and former sultans of Bornou;
and the ruins now standing give a proof of the buildings having been,
for this country, of a princely kind: the walls of a mosque, which were
more than twenty yards square, are still visible, and those of the
sultan’s house, with gates opening to the river, still remain; a private
mosque appears also to have been attached to the sultan’s
residence: the buildings were all of brick, and must have had a
superior appearance to any town we had seen in Africa: the situation
was beautiful, and although labyrinths of thickets and brambles now
overspread the banks of the river, while wild plants and useless
grass were in the meadows, yet I was assured that the whole
neighbourhood of Gambarou was once in a superior state of
cultivation; and that in the old sultan’s time, boats were constantly
moving to and from Kabshary and other towns to the west. Kouka
was at that time not in being, and Angornou but a small parcel of
huts.
May 28.—Dr. Oudney and myself mounted our horses this
morning, and followed the course of the river to the eastward, nearly
three miles: there being no pathway, we were obliged to break
through the high grass, trees, and thickly scattered bamboo, which
made it a fatiguing excursion, and after all, we could only now and
then get a sight of the water by following the track of the elephants
and other animals, whose ponderous bodies beat down every thing
before them. Our negro, Omar Gana, was alarmed, and would
willingly have turned back more than once; we, however, urged him
on, and at length came to an open, dry shoal of sand, the bed of the
river extending more than two hundred yards; here was the fresh
impression of the foot of a very large lion, and we found that the
stream was here again called the Yeou. To Omar Gana’s great
satisfaction, we now returned by a more direct path through the
wood to our tents: these wilds, from their not leading to any high
road or inhabited spot, are perhaps never visited, the whole country
having been abandoned ever since the Felatahs commenced their
inroads. Wild animals of all descriptions here abound therefore in
greater numbers than in any other part of the kingdom of Bornou:
several parcels of wood tied up with oziers, and large trees stripped
of their bark and afterwards deserted, showed how the wood-cutter
had been disturbed at his work by the ferocious inhabitants; and
some whitened bones, and the remains of a hatchet in one place,
made us shudder and conclude, that some one still less fortunate
had here met a miserable death. Straggling bands of Tuaricks also
sometimes scour the country about the banks of the river, and carry
off whatever suits their purpose.
On our return to the tents, we found that our situation was by no
means so comfortable as we could have wished. Kabshary, to which
place we intended proceeding, and there awaiting the arrival of the
sheikh, had been attacked and partly burnt by the Munga people
since our leaving Kouka, and deserted by the inhabitants; and while
we were debating on what steps we should take in consequence of
this intelligence, two Kanemboo spearmen came to us in great
consternation, with news that the Munga horse had been
reconnoitring all around us, had even visited the part of the river we
had been exploring in the morning, and after murdering several
Kanemboos, who were proceeding to join the sheikh, had carried off
the bullocks and whatever they had with them. The sheikh’s delay in
coming up had made them bold, and their approach had caused all
the Shouaas we had left at Muggaby to beat a retreat; we were
therefore left quite alone, and, as it seemed, might expect every
minute to be surrounded, taken prisoners, and with an iron round our
necks, with which slaves are coupled like greyhounds in slips,
marched off to Munga. Omar Gana was greatly alarmed, and
dressing himself in his steel jacket, with red giboon (waistcoat) over
it, and black turban, calmed our fears but little, by leaving us for a full
hour to see if the Shouaas had really left Muggaby; notwithstanding
he at the same time assured us, that the sight of his red jacket would
frighten a hundred Mungowy. On his return, which we looked for with
much anxiety, we found the alarming reports in part confirmed; no
Shouaas were near the lake, and he was quite sure the enemy had
been there. He proposed going to Kabshary, along the banks of the
river to the west; but acknowledged that the sheikh was not there,
and that the people had moved off towards Angornou: we
considered this bad advice, and determined on returning at least to
the Kouka road; that was, however, no easy task; and after some
consideration it was determined that we were to keep close to the
bank of the river, and creep through the woods as well as we could,
avoiding all beaten paths. We moved at three in the afternoon, and
crossed about two miles distant to the north bank of the river, our
road being extremely intricate, and overgrown with trees and
underwood.
Just before sunset we came upon a herd of elephants, fourteen or
fifteen in number; these the negroes made to dance and frisk like so
many goats, by beating violently a brass basin with a stick; and as
night now began to cast over us its gloomy veil, we determined on
fixing ourselves until morning in a small open space, where a large